EVN - Delphi

You know, I haven't seen what Zbrush can do mechanics-wise, but blender has a very powerful sculpting tool that resembles Zbrush's organic modelling.

Now if only we could make an engine powered by EK Hawkman's enthusiasm...

Looking forward to updates too.

If I had any computer skills and stuff like that, I would be helping. But I got NOTHING. Oh well.

All the time you spend ranting that you have no skills, you could be aquiring some.

Nobody learned how to swim without jumping in a pond, did they?

Yeah, actually, I did. I used a pool.

I'm just saying that its quite easy to learn EVN coding using MC or EVNEW. so it wouldn't take EKhawkman more than an hour or two to learn(unless he's REALLY incompetent).

Well, it might take more than that, but I'm sure you can pick up the basics in something close to that amount of time.

@0101181920, on Nov 21 2008, 07:07 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Yeah, actually, I did. I used a pool.

"Pond" is easier to say than "any largish body of water."

Actually, I learned to swim in a lake when I fell off a Sea-doo my dad was driving. It wasn't that bad, once I learned I could float without help.

Anyway, status update. Delphi is vaporware.

Ha. You'd better believe I'm kidding. No way I'm giving up on this. Even if it takes ten years, I'll finish the damn thing. Of this you have my promise.

There's a new ship on the way! I started working on the Enclave vehicles, and I'm pretty happy with this one so far.

I'm not sure what to call it yet, but I've got a big list of unused fictional ship names that I can pull one from. Either way, It'll be their primary cruiser, in the rare event that they use one. They tend to utilize fighters and gunboats more often; covert tactics or one-shot, heavy payload delivery.

I'll be using somewhat simpler models from now on, ever since I realized that after image compression on most of my models (put a bunch into Nova this week to test), about 75% of the details I add in modeling are lost.

Either way, don't lose hope!

@delphi, on Nov 30 2008, 08:08 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Even if it takes ten years, I'll finish the damn thing. Of this you have my promise.

Be careful what you wish for...

On the other hand, it's good to see faith. You had me scared for a second.

@delphi, on Nov 30 2008, 07:08 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

I'll be using somewhat simpler models from now on, ever since I realized that after image compression on most of my models (put a bunch into Nova this week to test), about 75% of the details I add in modeling are lost.

Yeah, I've had that problem, too. It's no good putting twenty two foot wide heat dissipators if you're looking at it from 200 meters up. You have a different approach to ship design, though, which makes this easier for you. I make a basic shape for the ship, and then add lots of details and parts. You make a complicated ship design, and don't spend so much time on the parts. Probably makes this easier for you.

Instead of spending a whole month or two learning how to work with Blender, I took a slightly different route and instead became more familiar with the materials used in Bryce, as I find materials to be a more natural than static textures, for most things. In this case, it paid off, and really well, I might add.

This is the Enclave cruiser rendered in rough Nova-perspective, with my new material textures applied. Looks pretty decent, doesn't it?

I don't know. I like it. Then again, it's 6:15 AM where I am. I should be sleeping.

Here's the same ship with a slightly lower angle and a slightly closer zoom, and I cut the engine glow, so you can admire the new texturing work I'm so proud of.

Believe it or not, that's just one texture wrapped around the whole ship. Nothing special. I'm very happy about how it worked out.

Also, I'll admit it, I'm bragging tonight. Get over it.

Wow. I've come a long way since the early days back on good ol' EV-Nova.net.

I'm not sure why, but after capturing two really reflective angles of the Enclave ship during test renders, I felt I should composite them onto something pretty, so I made this. It's not really TC content, but it's relevant nonetheless, and it's neat.

I'm finally going to sleep. 9:01 AM.

Ah. Very nice. I do like the texturing method - somewhat classic, with no UV mapping or texture differentiation between parts. There are only two things I really don't like: one is that the thruster texture is the same - I would expect a ship's thrusters to be made from a somewhat different material than the rest of the ship, though just making that area darker would work just fine. The second is the complete lack of color or symbols - even just little highlights go a long way. Your ships also lend themselves very nicely to homeworld-esque texturing techniques, so if I were you I might look into putting some stripes and patterns along your ships to accent their shape. I'd leave much of the metallic texturing, though, also.

http://i148.photobuc...a/homeworld.jpg
http://www.4gamer.ne...eworld2_001.jpg
http://www.counterfr...world%202/2.jpg
http://www.herne.nl/...hw2-poster2.jpg

I would indeed like to change a few things for the engines, and maybe apply some color here and there, but then again, I don't want to lose the drab effect that I'm aiming for with the whole universe. The engines are a definite must though. What I actually thought of doing before I even rendered the ships was taking the sprite sheet into Photoshop and simply colorizing certain structural elements; a simple form of painting, rather than complicated decals and stripes.

I would also really like to change the texture orientation on the ship's "spine"; that armor plate that wraps itself all the way from the top of the bow to the tail of the craft, so that it follows the large downward slant properly, and doesn't blend over with the body of the craft so badly.

All that aside though, the ship looks AWESOME inside the game, especially with the engines and the running lights and all working as it flies around the galaxy.

This post has been edited by Delphi : 02 December 2008 - 07:36 PM

So, I've been trying out Lightwave on a student license just because I can, and all I can say (to pipeline) is, GOOD GOD THIS IS FRUSTRATING. I must commend the EV development team for working with Lightwave, because I can't for the life of me figure the damn thing out.

I tried importing the OBJ from my newest ship so that I could fiddle around with a pre-built model and experiment with texturing, and ran into several snags.

1. Half of the surfaces were not imported. The model had patches of missing polygons, and I have no idea how to stitch them back in, but the original OBJ is verifiably intact, and imports into other 3D programs (3DS, Bryce, etc) just fine.

2. The materials editor (which I'm assuming is used for texturing the object), appears similar to the system used in Bryce, but it's different enough that I'm completely lost. I don't even know how to import a pre-existing texture, so for now I'm stuck with gray.

Any tips or pointers from experienced modelers (using Lightwave) would be MUCH appreciated. I don't even know where to start, and now that I've got this incredibly powerful machine of a program in front of me, I'd very much like to be able to use it.

In short, help!